Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-released copy of Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 is dated 5 May 1955 and comes from the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It is a statistical analysis of about 4,000 unidentified aerial object reports from 1947 through 1952, coded onto IBM punched cards with the help of a panel of scientists. The report concludes that such objects were highly unlikely to be technological developments beyond present-day scientific knowledge. It also found no valid evidence of physical matter.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
records include condensations of all individual sighting reports, and the IBM cards used in various phases of the study. # ORIGIN AND NATURE OF DATA Reports of sightings were received by the U. S. Air Force from a representative cross section of the population of the U. S., and varied widely in completeness and quality. Included were reports from reputable scientists, housewives, farmers, students, and technically trained members of the Armed Forces. Reports varied in length from a few sentences stating that a "flying saucer" had been sighted, to those containing thousands of words, including description, speculation, and advice on how to handle the "problem of the 'flying saucers'". Some reports were of high quality, conservative, and as complete as the observer could make them; a few originated from people confined to mental institutions. A critical examination of the reports revealed, however, that a high percentage of them was submitted by serious people, mystified by what they had seen and motivated by patriotic responsibility. Three principal sources of reports were noted in the preliminary review of the data. The bulk of the data arrived at ATIC through regular military channels, from June, 1947, until the middle of 1952. A second type of data consisted of letters reporting sightings sent by civilian observers directly to ATIC. Most of these direct communications were dated subsequent to April 30, 1952, and are believed to be the result of a suggestion by a popular magazine that future reports be directed to the Air Technical Intelligence Center. As could be expected, a large number of letters was received following this publicity. A third type of data was that contained in questionnaire forms completed by the observer himself. A questionnaire form, developed during the course of this study, was mailed by ATIC to a selected group of writers of direct letters with the request that the form be completed and returned. Approximately 1,000 responses were received by ATIC. In general, the data were subjective, consisting of qualified estimates of physical characteristics rather than of precise measurements. Furthermore, most of the reports were not reduced to written form immediately. The time between sighting and report varied from one day to several years. Both of these factors introduced an element of doubt concerning the validity of the original data, and increased its subjectivity. This was intensified by the recognized inability of the average individual to estimate speeds, distances, and sizes of objects in the air with any degree of accuracy. In spite of these limitations, methods of statistical analysis of such reports in sufficiently large groups are valid. The danger lies in the possibility of
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 312 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.